Peyton Farquhar : Southern plantation owner who is to be hanged by Union soldiers as punishment for his attempt (or suspected attempt) to destroy Owl Creek Bridge. Mrs. Farquhar : Farquhar's wife. Union Soldiers : They include executioners, sentinels, and overseeing officers on the bridge and a company of soldiers along the shore of Owl Creek. Union Scout : Soldier who wears Confederate gray when he rides onto Farquhar's plantation (in a flashback) and asks for a drink of water.
The action takes place at a railroad bridge in northern Alabama during the U.S. Civil War, not long after the Battle of Corinth in northern Mississippi on October 3 and 4, 1862. The bridge runs north-south over Owl Creek. (See Grant's Reference , below.) On one side of the creek is thick forest. On the other is a company of Union soldiers. A cannon pokes from a line of trees the soldiers are using as a stockade. On the bridge are other Union soldiers preparing to execute a man with a rope around his neck.
Time of Day
The story begins early in the morning, as disclosed by the boldfaced words in the following passage in Part I:
Point of View
Bierce tells "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in three parts. Part I is in objective third-person point of view except for the last three paragraphs. In objective third-person narration, the storyteller observes events but cannot enter the mind of any character and disclose his or her thoughts. In the last three paragraphs of the Part I, the narration shifts to omniscient (all-knowing) third-person point of view in relation to Peyton Farquhar. This shift enables Bierce to take the reader inside Farquhar's mind to demonstrate how emotional upheaval alters not only the way the mind interprets reality but also the way it perceives the passage of time. First, Farquhar mistakes the ticking of his watch for the tolling of a bell or the ring of an anvil struck by a hammer. Then, after Farquhar drops from the bridge at the moment of execution, he perceives a single second as lasting hours. In presenting his psychological study, Bierce could not have used first-person point of view. Here is why:
After the Battle of Shiloh (southern Tennessee, April 1862), General Ulysses S. Grant marched his Union forces south into Mississippi on his way to Vicksburg, a strategically important Mississippi River city. At Corinth a northeastern Mississippi town just south of the Tennessee border and just east of the Alabama border Grant and General William Starke Rosecrans repulsed a Confederate attack while solidifying control of the town, an important railroad center. In Chapter 26 of his memoirs of 1885 and 1886, Grant refers to Corinth and Owl Creek. (In his short story, Bierce also refers to the Battle of Corinth and, of course, to Owl Creek.) Here is the passage written by Grant:
Type of Work and Years of Publication
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a short story that observes the classical unitiesthat is, it takes place in a single location on a single day while focusing on a single subject. There are no subplots. Although the story is fiction, it is based on real events during the U.S. Civil War. The story first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner in 1890, then appeared in 1891 in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians , a collection of Ambrose Bierces stories.
Foreshadowing
The narrator of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge tells the reader that Peyton Farquhar escapes death after the rope around his neck snaps at the bottom of his fall from the bridge. Farquhar then swims to shore, under heavy gunfire, and makes his way home, by nightfall, through the wilds. However, the narrator reveals at the end of the story that Farquhar's escape is a dream that lasts only from the moment he drops from the bridge to the moment the rope breaks his neck at the end of his fall. To prepare the reader for the expansion of the single second it takes for Farquhar to die into a day-long event, author Bierce presents the following passage in which time begins to pass more slowly.
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How Human Beings Deny Reality to Protect Themselves
On the personal and specific level, plantation owner Peyton Farquhar denies reality as a means of forestalling it. First, he lapses into a delusionary dream in which he escapes death after the weight of his body snaps the hangman's rope. Then he swims to safety under heavy gunfire and returns to his plantation. This dream lasts only a second, but Farquhar's mind turns it into an hours-long flight from the enemy and reality. On the impersonal and general level, the slaveholding South represented by Farquhar refuses to accept the reality that slavery is a barbarous institution.
Peyton Farquhar's livelihood depended on holding black men, women, and children in bondage. Ironically, Farquhar ends up in bondage, with a noose around his neck and cords around his wrists. Bondage is terrifying, Farquhar discovers, and all of the last thoughts of his life center on escaping it.
The following passages from "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" appear to allude to slavery.
There are also direct references to slavery in the short story, such as the second sentence in Part II: "Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause."
Greek Mythology
In Part III, Paragraph 16, the narrator alludes to Aeolus, the god of the winds in Greek mythology, saying, "A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps ."
Bierce's story relies heavily on imagery centering on sight and sound to vivify his tale. Following are examples of sound imagery. Figures of speech appear in colored type.
The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara , yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. ( Simile )
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! ( Onomatopoeia )
The cannon had taken a hand in the game . As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond. ( Personification/Metaphor ) ( Onomatopoeia )
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches h igh above h is h ead roused h im from h is dream. ( Onomatopoeia ) ( Alliteration )
Peyton Farquhar experiences a dream within a dream, as noted in the first sentence of Paragraph 17: "A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream." Up to this point in the story, Farquhar was already dreaming that he had escaped the Union forces. But after reaching the shore in his first dream, he lapses into another dream, a daydream, in which he becomes entranced with the beauty of nature and the joy of freedom. Is it possible to experience a dream within a dream? Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem entitled "A Dream Within a Dream
A Dream Within A Dream By Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Study-Guide Reader Presents His Interpretation
....... Gregory Hazzard, a reader of this study guide, has offered the following additional observations about Farquhars end-of-life experience: ....... When Farquhar returns in his dream to a world he recognizes, it is from a perspective in which blacks welcome him home along the path to his sanctuary. This is the perspective from which Farquhar feels safe and comfortable. Since he doesnt know the slaves on a human level, his mind relates to them as trees. The black tree bodies and black people are equal objects in his natural environment. The best his mind can offer in the dream is an outline of colored bodies. ....... This illusion is reinforced in that the welcoming he would ordinarily receive as a slaveholding plantation owner is a parallel of the welcoming he receives in his dream. That is, it is a dream life within a dream life. Because of the way things work in his society, his life as the owner of a plantation and slaves is better than that of other human beings. He ignores the concept that his slaves are not necessarily lined up lovingly and respectfully to welcome him to his sanctuary. He ignores that scouts in an underground system of freedom fighters stand ready to summarily convict him for his crimes against freedom.
Study Questions and Essay Topics
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ope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought? "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair." |
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Story Analysis
Character Analysis
Symbols & Motifs
Literary Devices
Important Quotes
Discussion Questions
How does the Owl Creek Bridge as a liminal space (a threshold between two sides)? What is significant about Farquhar’s transformation as he crosses through the space? Use evidence from the text in your answer.
Bierce uses the literary technique of stream of consciousness before it became a common part of modernist literature. How does Bierce use of stream of consciousness in the story? How does it affect the story?
Bierce’s story is told out of order (not in chronological order). How does this structure lend itself to the theme of the Perception of Reality? Give evidence from the text.
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By Ambrose Bierce
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AnOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Inthe story, AnOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ,there is clear indications of reality which help to show that thestory is true. These are edged upon the various elements given out inthe literal guides on the nature of reality and how one can be ableto establish whether a given story is real or not. The elements ofreality go a long way in making one to believe that the narrative isgiven in a particular story did take place (Tabachnick, 2013)
Thereare various literal elements that help to bring out the aspect of thereality of stories. These include flashback, irony, figurativelanguage, and foreshadowing. One of the elements that Ambrose Bierceuses in his aim of ensuring that there is an element of reality inthe story is the use of silence (Bierce, 2015). In this instance, thenarrator applied silence to explain the sequence of events that leadto the hanging of Farhar. The story is told in an eerie atmospherewhich leads the reader of the story to be left out in a great levelof uncertainty. This aspect makes the reader read between the linesand try to come up with some imaginations of how the story is Khanom,2013). This motivates the person to try and live through the plot ofthe story and be able to, ‘see’ how the events took place.
Anotherview of reality that can be seen in the story is the fact that Bierceapplies the use of metaphor in which he explains the focus that thesolders involved in the hanging of Farquhar showed while doing thejob (Herman, 2013). They did this as per the military requirementswhich force them to observe a great level of attention while in theirduties. In the narrative, Bierce uses the metaphor that, ‘they wereas stiff as statues of stone to show the focus that the solders hadwhile on duty. The figurative use of words helps to bring out thereality nature of the story and therefore, makes it easy for one tobelieve that the incident did take place.
Bierce,A (2015). AnOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Herman,D. (2013). Narrative Theory and the Sciences of Mind.  LiteratureCompass ,  10 (5),421-436.
Khanom,A. (2013). TeachingAmerican Literature: "Silence as Literary Device in AmbroseBierce`s `The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge .`A Journal of Theory and Practice Spring 2013 (6:1) 45
Tabachnick,S. E. (2013). A Possible Source for the Conclusion of AmbroseBierce`s “”.  ANQ:A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews ,  26 (1),45-48.
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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Essay. In the story, An Occurrence at the Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, the author shows how an individual perceives time. The depiction of time in the story shows the fluid nature of time (Bierce, n.d). The author uniquely uses the nature of time to narrate a story from a present time to that of the past.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' is a classic example of the American short story. Its author, Ambrose Bierce, was himself a fascinating figure, who is also remembered for his witty The Devil's Dictionary and for his mysterious disappearance in around 1914.. Published by The San Francisco Examiner in 1890, 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek ...
Summary. Analysis. At a railroad bridge overlooking a small creek in Northern Alabama, a man stands with a noose around his neck and his hands tied behind him. He's guarded by Union soldiers at either end of the bridge. A Union stockade stands on the far side of the stream, with a row of soldiers in front of it, standing at parade rest.
Conclusion. In conclusion, Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a masterful exploration of psychological realism, achieved through a sophisticated narrative structure, vivid imagery, and a profound understanding of the human mind's response to death.
La rivière du hibou ("The Owl River", known in English as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ), a French version directed by Robert Enrico and produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix, was released in 1963. Enrico's film won Best Short Subject at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, and the 1963 Academy Award for Live Action Short Film.
Historical Context of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a comment on the American Civil War, which pit the agrarian Southern states, who wished to secede from the Union, against the industrial Northern states, who wished to preserve it. Slavery lay at the core of their dispute; the Southern economy ...
Analysis of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 2, 2021. This classic story, first published in Ambrose Bierce's short story collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, continues to intrigue new generations of readers. Although set during the civil war, it is notable not for the combat scenes that other Bierce stories portray but for the ...
Last Updated September 6, 2023. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a study in narrative structure, with the writer using plot devices such as red herrings and misdirection to explore ...
The main themes in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" are time and mortality, reality and perception, and the futility of war. Time and mortality: Bierce dramatizes time's inevitable passage ...
Essay Example: Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" stands as one of the most compelling and frequently analyzed works in American literature. First published in 1890, this short story has captivated readers with its intricate narrative structure, psychological.
In his intriguing story an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce expound on the impact of civil war in America. Intuitively, he highlights the effect of hanging on the conscience of an individual.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Summary. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by Ambrose Bierce set in the Civil War-era South about a man who prepares to be executed and ...
Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Essay. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce, is the story of the hanging of a Civil War era Southern gentleman by the name of Peyton Farquhar. The story begins with an unidentified man being prepared to be hanged by a company of Union soldiers on a railroad bridge that ...
Writing essays on An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge offers a unique opportunity to delve into the complexities of human experience, war, and the nature of reality. By critically engaging with this timeless story, students can develop a deeper understanding of literary analysis and historical context. Explore the depths of this captivating ...
Confinement and Escape. Peyton Farquhar, the protagonist of Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," experiences a kind of "round trip" from imprisonment to freedom and back to imprisonment. Farquhar is captured and condemned to death for attempting to sabotage a Union stockade, yet just before his execution ...
Updated: Nov 2nd, 2023. This essay analyzes the theme of suspense in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". The mystery story by Ambrose Bierce, that was written in 1890, focuses on the life of a middle-aged man called Peyton Farquhar. The plot of the story unfolds at the time of the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Bierce tells "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in three parts. Part I is in objective third-person point of view except for the last three paragraphs. In objective third-person narration, the storyteller observes events but cannot enter the mind of any character and disclose his or her thoughts. ... Write and essay that compares and contrasts ...
Get unlimited access to SuperSummaryfor only $0.70/week. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and ...
Course. 81K views. ''An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'' is set during the American Civil War time period. It takes place near a river in Northern Alabama. The water of the river is described as ...
Free Essays. AnOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. AnOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Inthe story, AnOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ,there is clear indications of reality which help to show that thestory is true. These are edged upon the various elements given out inthe literal guides on the nature of reality and how one can be ableto establish ...
Expert Answers. The idea contained in your last sentence is worthy and relevant to Ambrose Bierce's story, "An Occurrence on Owl Bridge." Since the concept of time does not really exist, Bierce ...
In conclusion, the story of " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" relates better to perception and consciousness than the film version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Bierce takes the reader from reality to one man's perception of reality and plays each idea off the other. Meanwhile, Enrico takes the audience through the actions of ...
Psychology document from Liberty University, 4 pages, 6/12/24, 10:05 PM An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge: A Study in Psychological Realism: [Essay Example], 757 words GradesFixer An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: a Study in Psychological Realism Categories: An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (https:/gradesf ... 757 words GradesFixer https ...